This Serious Joint
by It'sTimeToDance
Summary: In the team's absense, Murdock is transfered to a hospital with questionable methods. Drabble. Serious? You decide.


Author's Note: Writing crazy is kind of my shtick, so I thought I might as well. This is probably gratuitous use of third person insanity, but you know. Written quickly just because there's been a slew of reruns on TV Land lately.

* * *

"We're bustin' out of this serious joint." _**Bustin' Out, **_**Rick James**

It was Face who had first made his appearance in the VA hospital, dodging through the crazies, the drooling, huddled masses waiting for the voices to stop. Some recognized him, waved idly and muttered things they understood but no once else seemed to. Face kept is faux-professional air, shoulders straight and nose upturned and clip board tucked under the arm. The patient, H.M. Murdock, had a bad case of pneumonia and he was to be removed from the hospital's care immediately for further treatment. Unless, of course, you'd like to speak with my manager about it. Yes, that was the plan.

But that, really, did not come together. Not the way it should have.

"Excuse me," he had said at the front desk. "I'm here for the transfer of a Mr…" he glanced at his clip board. "H.M. Murdock."

The woman, sitting there with an apathetic snarl on her face, momentarily glanced at the stack of folders beside the filing cabinet and spoke without looking up. "He's already been transferred."

Face froze, his dashing smirk falling as surely as a rock slide. "Excuse me?"

She, with her wilting brown hair, leaned her chin against her palm, her manicured fingers clacking together. "He's been moved to a hospital in Arizona for experimental treatment."

Face, so composed and so mischievous, felt his shoulders drop and his eyes flicker and his stomach lurch like he had swallowed poison. "_Experimental_ treatment?"

The lady scowled at a sudden screech coming from down the hall and made her way from behind the desk, throwing over her a shoulder a "You know, you lot would do well to check in on each other once in a while."

o.O

It had taken them six months to track down this hospital in Arizona.

During this time period, they had discovered the "experimental treatment" included electro-shock therapy, high stress stimulations and sensory deprivation. These were all reserved for what were considered the floaters, the crazies with no family to protest and enough insanity to fuel a freight train.

And when the A-Team did find the hospital in Arizona, they did not have much hope.

Face, in his best fake MD coat, repeated the same procedure he'd been through countless of times before. I'm here for an H.M. Murdock, just checking in on him, yes, well, you can take it up with my supervisor. Yes, thank you.

The captain's room was on the end of the grime-coated building, the last room in the last hall in the last wing. A small window with bars and slightest hint of white padding. The guard that had accompanied him took out his keys and shimmied them in the rusted keyhole. He stood aside so Face could step inside.

The door closed behind him.

A man in a straight jacket sat in a corner, muttering and drooling, with bald patches revealing the blistered, raw skin beneath it. His eyes were both wild and disconnected, as though he were trapped in a separate world.

"Murdock?"

He gave no sign he had heard a thing.

Face finally let the weight of the last six months fall completely on his shoulders, looking at this crazy man who could fly anything with wings and could speak a hundred languages and was a genius, a real genius. But then he was sitting in this soft room with his arms wrapped around each other and his brain muddled from electric currents being thrown at him like hard balls at a Yankees game. And it was a sad thing. To watch, to see, to have to deal with because this was his friend, his best friend, and he owed it to him. To deal with it.

He squatted, trying to look his teammate in the eye, greeted with only a lazily uninterested glance. He could only hear snippets of Murdock's conversation with himself. He was talking to Billy, to Bugs Bunny and all the others, nonsensical ramblings.

"Hey," Face prodded, lifting his hands to touch him, let him know he was here, but he couldn't. He was too tiny, delicate like wet paper. "Hey, Murdock."

"Holy _clipped feathers_, Batman!" he suddenly shrieked. "How're we gonna get outta this pickle?"

Face scowled as the other man jerked to the side, falling flat on his back and humming the _Batman_ theme song, completely unaware of anything but 1960's Gotham City.

* * *

He carted him off in a wheelchair, nodding pleasantly at the nurses and orderlies like he wasn't disgusted, repulsed at the thought of them and this place and his friend, _his friend_, drooling like a toddler.

The van was inconspicuously parked in the hospital's parking lot, inconspicuous between a truck and a mini cooper. As Face rolled Murdock from the double doors, it quickly backed out and pulled up to the sidewalk. The door slid open, with BA half out the door and staring intently at the wheelchair. His eyes flickered, from Murdock to Face to the hospital and back again.

"Get him in here," was all he said.

* * *

BA switched seats with Hannibal as they sped off down the highway and towards the airport. "You think he's good to fly, Hannibal?"

Hannibal said nothing, as did Face, and BA mentally prepared himself to fly coach next to a dozen screaming kids.

* * *

"Hey," Face said, the van bumping along beneath him. He had Murdock's shoulders, now free from the straight jacked, held firmly in his hands, trying not to look at the horrible abrasions on the pilot's head but failing. "Come on, Murdock. Say something."

His eyes were lazy, rolling around the socket like marbles in an empty cup. He muttered, endlessly and pointlessly, his voice occasionally rising loud enough to comprehend. Sometimes it was in one of his languages, sometimes in Vietnamese, sometimes just a catchphrase of some cartoon character, sometimes in some garbled up tongue only he could understand. It was like the very bare essentials of the Murdock they knew, a version striped of it's humanity. A Murdock-robot.

In the two hours drive from the hospital to the airport, Murdock said one thing his team could truly understand:

"No, stop. Please."

* * *

Murdock had never felt crazy before.

Sure, he'd read the doctor's notes and the papers and the documentation, all reminding him of the contrary. He knew how insane he must have sounded when he spoke and everyone gave him a look, a look that told him so. But he never felt it before, the feeling that you were lost in a horizon full of smoke, falling over the edge, aimless, senseless. Trapped in a world where everything was not right, where the sky was purple and the grass was piss yellow and your skin melted right off your body.

And the voices, the fucking voices.

"Murdock," they kept saying. "Say something, Murdock."

They talk a lot, so I always try to say something, anything, to shut them up. It never works.

"That crazy fool."

"What're we gonna do with 'im, boss?"

"He's gotta say something' that makes sense eventually."

"I don't…they messed up his head too bad, Hannibal. I don't think…"

"Keep trying. He's in there somewhere."

Well, that's it. I've said all I can and if that's not enough, I'd like to know what is.

* * *

**A/N Oh my goooooodnesss that was so drabbly. I don't even know if I'm going to post it. I probably will. I don't know. It's just so silly.**


End file.
